"There was no way to stop Milosevic from committing atrocities without a force better than the 45 thousand troops at his disposal," she added.

Leaning was extremely critical of NATO for pulling an international observation force out of Kosovo a full four days before bombing began, even though they required only seven hours to leave.

"It was like pulling the control rods out of a nuclear power plant...the delay in bombing allowed [the Serbs] to establish a foothold to obliterate the population in Kosovo," she said.

All of the panelists said the Rambouillet agreement, a proposal signed by Albanians and rejected by Serbs, which called for an autonomous Kosovo still under Serb rule, would have to be abandoned.

"Our whole approach has usually been to put the pieces back together. It's the Rodney King solution--can differences be reconciled," Van Evera said. "In Yugoslavia, we have a marriage that cannot be saved...too much blood has been thrown on the floor."

Van Evera suggested that a ground war was less risky than some people assumed.

"It doesn't present the aspects of war that Americans fear," he argued.

He said American forces would not face a guerrilla army, Serbia did not house a sea of hostile population and the Serbian army had little combat experience.